A Broken Faerun

The world needs heroes . . .

The world needs heroes . . .

A hundred years ago the world of Abeir-Toril was a place of growing technology and supreme magic. All that changed with the Spellplague.

A great hero and the former king of Baldur’s Gate, Draken I, was the cause of the conflict known as the Spellplague. He was a bold and able warrior, and a master of magic as well. His ultimate aspiration was to ascend to goddom. This, he thought, could be achieved through fulfilling a prophecy that he had received. It told of the lord of the Nine Hells of Baator, Asmodeus, and claimed that both could not live while the other survived. At this he began his conquest of the Nine Hells.

The team was great and able-bodied. Elminster the Mage, Drizzt Do’Urden, Storm Silverhand, the Simbul, and others of the Mighty joined Draken on his noble quest to the Nine Hells. Adventurers came from far and wide to take up the task of conquering the Hells. This, all of this, was to their ultimate demise. Legend has is that Draken rode the River Styx to the root of the Hells, the last layer called Nessus. Here he confronted the Lords of Nine all at once. He slew them all in a matter of seconds with a combination of his prodigious magic and his legendary strength. Then, he took the Ruby Rod of Asmodeus for himself as proof of his success.

The success was short-lived as Draken returned home to Baldur’s Gate. There was peace on the continent of Faerûn for a limited time thereafter, a period not even a year in length. It is said that Draken was tormented with horrid dreams and visions. Then, the Spellplague occurred.

The Spellplague was an event triggered indirectly by Draken himself. In his conquest of the Nine Hells, he had not thought of the consequences. There was one such consequence now known as the Prime Corollary. Without a place to go, all of the damned souls and the newly damned souls breached the walls of every plane known to even the most knowledgeable philosopher on Toril. Many gods were slain as banished demon lords and damned souls invaded their palaces. One goddess killed by this event was Mystra, the goddess of magic who had provided spells to Toril’s spellcasters. This stripped all magic-users of their powers, such as in the Time of Troubles.

Draken was said to have been given a quest to right the wrong that he had caused. A rare agent of Ao, the Overgod of Abeir-Toril, met with Draken in his castle. When the Agent Primeval insulted Draken’s exploits for having thrown the multiverse from balance, Draken killed him with the fury that had been festering inside him since the arrival of his horrid dreaming.

The Agent died and sent forth a brilliant bead of light from his mouth as he lay on the floor of Draken’s throne room. The light then entered Draken’s mouth and caused his body to be enveloped in the Light of Birth. Where there once stood a mighty part-dragon shade king with four arms and whose height was over twelve feet now stood a normal man, the man that Draken had once been.

Now, Draken was a mortal and was not tainted by the dreams that had plagued him before. It is said that Ao himself spoke to Draken I that day. From this, his task was cut out for him: restore Baator in order to restore the magic of the Realms. This he set out to do immediately.

The specifics are unknown to all but Draken himself, but through a series of pacts know as the Pacts of Resonating Order the magic of the Realms was restored. The Nine Hells were restored and Ao himself transferred the souls of the damned expeditiously to this new Hell. It is whispered that Asmodeus is back to power, with his Ruby Rod at hand as well.

And as for Draken I the god-king of Baldur’s Gate, he ascended to goddom along with some others. A mysterious individual known as Aoundril restored the place that was left by the goddess Mystra. Even while there were many new gods, other deities died during the Spellplague and some even grew in power.

This was sixty years ago. Since, the Realms have seen the arrival of a mysterious people known as the dragonborn, a rapid growth of evil that seems to lurk in every corner of the planet, and the power vacuum that took place during the Spellplague had left the government of many nations changed. Overall, the Ralems are a place of chaos and darkness. There are, however, points of light in the world. One of such is the town of Winterhaven tucked in the foothills of the Thunder Peaks.

This is where your adventure begins. The world needs heroes. Can you and the members of your party be the ones to change this world forever? Welcome to Faerûn . . .